The 1990 vs 1994 is an interesting discussion, so I decided to do a little statistics. Note that this is solely based on cqranking and should be taken for what it is: A statistical research, and we all know the saying "statistics reveal a lot, but hide the most important".
Anyway, I decided to compare 1990 with 1994 on two years - what I call the "breakthrough" years. The breakthrough years of the 1990 generation are 2010 and 2011, while the breakthrough years of the 1994 generation are 2014 and 2015.
For each year, I looked at the average score of top 1, 3, 5, 10 and 20.
The 1990 generation in 2010:
Top 1: 928 (Sagan)
Top 3: 499 (Sagan, Felline, Matthews)
Top 5: 390 (Sagan, Felline, Matthews, Pinot, Phinney)
Top 10: 238
Top 20: 143
The 1990 generation in 2011:
Top 1: 1596 (Sagan)
Top 3: 946 (Sagan, Pinot, Matthews)
Top 5: 697 (Sagan, Pinot, Matthews, Phinney, Kwiatkowski)
Top 10: 444
Top 20: 268
The 1994 generation in 2014:
Top 1: 241 (Kudus)
Top 3: 230 (Kudus, Bauhaus, Carthy)
Top 5: 223 (Kudus, Bauhaus, Carthy, Benoot, Herklotz)
Top 10: 171
Top 20: 119
The 1994 generation in 2015:
Top 1: 872 (Benoot)
Top 3: 679 (Benoot, Ewan, Mareczko)
Top 5: 528 (Benoot, Ewan, Mareczko, Andersen, Lopez)
Top 10: 363
Top 20: 242
As the numbers show, the 1990 generation comfortably beats the 1994 generation in all tests. However, the numbers also show that the deeper we look into the generations, the closer it gets. The explanations for this can be explained by one - or both - of these thesis: a) the 1994 generation has a better depth than the 1990 generation, b) Sagan is so good that he single-handedly skews the statistics. Therefore I decided to test what the statistics would look like in world without Sagan, so I ran the numbers again but this time with the 2-21 ranked instead of 1-20 for the 1990 generation.
The 1990 generation without Sagan in 2010:
Top 1: 288 (Felline
Top 3: 270 (Felline, Matthews, Pinot)
Top 5: 228 (Felline, Matthews, Pinot, Phinney, Le Bon)
Top 10: 152
Top 20: 98
The 1990 generation without Sagan in 2011:
Top 1: 639 (Pinot)
Top 3: 528 (Pinot, Matthews, Phinney)
Top 5: 428 (Pinot, Matthews, Phinney, Kwiatkowski, Petit)
Top 10: 297
Top 20: 191
As this experiment shows, the 1994 generation actually does, on average, better than the Sagan-less 1990 generation, which could indicate that the level of the two generations might be a lot closer than the first test showed.
As mentioned in the beginning of this already rather long post, statistics don't necessarily mean much though and a lot can happen in a few years. Therefore I decided to take a look at the top performing riders from the 1990 generation in 2015 to examine if there's a consistency between their performances when they are 19-21 years and when they're 24-25. Here's the top 20 1990 riders in 2015 and their cqranking among others from the 1990 generation in 2010 and 2011 in parentheses:
1. Sagan (1, 1)
2. Aru (25, 13)
3. Quintana (10, 27)
4. Pinot (4, 2)
5. Dumoulin (9, 17)
6. Matthews (3, 3)
7. Bouhanni (13, 9)
8. Kwiatkowski (7, 5)
9. Bardet (14, 10)
10. Dennis (16, 114)
11. Felline (2, 7)
12. Chaves (-, 23)
13. Sbaragli (-, 99)
14. Colbrelli (20, 33)
15. Jans (-, 208)
16. Naesen (-, -)
17. Herrada (84, 8)
18. Lammertink (-, 90)
19. Bennett (44, 41)
20. Dillier (143, 69)
As the results show, quite a lot can happen in 4-5 years. That said, most of the real world beaters showed off their talent when they were 19-21 years old; all of the current top 10 1990'ers were at some point among the top 10 of their generation in 2010-2011 as well except Aru and Dennis, which could indicate that looking at the performances of riders even when they are very young, could give us an idea of their performances further ahead in their careers.
Anyway, that's enough for now, I better get some real work done now
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